AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Picture a cardboard box packed with envelopes, swabs, a comb, nail clippers - you know, stuff you could find in almost any drug store. Well, this box, as mundane as it sounds, represented a revolution in law enforcement. It was the rape kit, and it is one of the most important inventions in the history of investigating and prosecuting sexual assaults. And yet, the visionary behind the rape kit system has largely been forgotten by history. One reporter was determined to track down Marty Goddard, the woman who made it her life's mission to design and push the rape kit out into the world before she seemed to vanish from the world without a trace. Pagan Kennedy details the story in her new book, "The Secret History Of The Rape Kit." She joins us now. Welcome.
PAGAN KENNEDY: Hi.
CHANG: Hi. So tell me what initially made you want to delve into the origins of the rape kit - because it presented several mysteries to you at once, right?
KENNEDY: Yes, yes. This started for me in 2018. The rape kit was very much in the news then because of the backlog. There were almost half a million kits that had not been processed by police departments, and this had...
CHANG: Right.
KENNEDY: ...Become a big scandal. But as soon as I was thinking about it, it just seemed so amazing to me that this national system existed that could provide evidence of a sexual assault or be used to also prove that a man falsely accused of sexual assault was innocent. It just seemed like such an amazing thing, given that, so often, survivors just aren't believed. There was this very disorganized system for collecting evidence after a sexual assault victim came into the hospital. But because nobody was talking to each other and it was all very disorganized, often the evidence would just be thrown out. And often, the survivor would be treated with no respect at all.
CHANG: And can you talk more about that culture? Because Marty Goddard - I mean, she's working during the 1970s on this mission. Can you just describe how law enforcement generally approached sexual assault investigations and prosecutions back then? How much was stacked against the accuser?
KENNEDY: First of all, marital rape was legal at that time. I found this mind-blowing article called "Little Ladies Of The Night" in The New York Times, which talked about the problem of 13-year-old girls who were turning tricks in Midtown Manhattan. And the whole problem was blamed on these children. You know, the whole way that people conceived of child abuse was thought to be very rare, and yet it was just going on in plain sight, as was sexual assault. And so often, when a survivor came to the police or an accuser, you know, first of all, it was completely up to the police detective to decide how he felt about her. I mean, that was actually written into the handbooks back then. The handbooks would say many, many of the people who accuse sexual assault are liars, and so you don't have to listen to them. And so - I mean, I could go on and on.
CHANG: Right.
KENNEDY: There are just so many things that make your blood boil. I think Marty Goddard was fighting for the idea that sexual assault could be proven with evidence.
CHANG: Exactly. She asks a very simple question, right? Like, and that question is - what if sexual assault could be investigated and prosecuted like other crimes, such as murder or robbery, where there was a way, in many cases, to prove with physical evidence that the crime had happened? Can you explain how revolutionary it was to ask that question at the time?
KENNEDY: Absolutely - because, again, the survivor would come in, and she would be treated with utter disrespect. Like, the police might bring her into the hospital and just yell out, we have a rape here. So there was, you know, so much almost harassment of the survivors. But then, also, there was the idea that every assault was just a he-said, she-said, and you would never, ever be able to prove it. And the fact that nobody was trying to really collect the evidence or that evidence was so often thrown out, of course, just reinforced that idea.
So Marty Goddard really fought for the idea that, look, we have to create a system here. We have to train the nurses, train the crime lab, build this into every hospital. You know, she did so much. She raised the money to create this citywide and then statewide rape kit system. There was all this training. There was a system she put in place inside the kits so that everybody who dealt with it was on the same page and was using the same techniques and, you know, really communicating with each other.
CHANG: And by the mid-1980s, how do you see the rape kit system change?
KENNEDY: Yes. So it's important to say that, when all of this was happening in Chicago in the 1970s, DNA fingerprinting or identification still hadn't been invented yet. Physical evidence was still, of course, very important. But what you were able to tell from, like, a blood sample was rather limited.
CHANG: Right.
KENNEDY: But then, DNA fingerprinted (ph) is invented in the mid-1980s and starts to filter out into forensics. And now you've already got this nationwide system of these kits full of biological evidence. So now they are just a million times more powerful because you can now identify the exact perpetrator, and that really changes what you can do with this kit. You can really say, you know, with pretty good certainty, this person was the person whose blood or semen was collected. Or you could say this person is innocent.
CHANG: Was not.
KENNEDY: Yes, and that's...
CHANG: Right. You could exonerate people.
KENNEDY: Yes, and the exonerations are just as important as the convictions.
CHANG: Absolutely. When you consider how many sexual assaults still go unreported today, how much do you think has really changed in terms of how society treats survivors of rape compared to 50 years ago, when Marty Goddard was on this crusade?
KENNEDY: I don't think I knew sexual assault was illegal until I was in college in the 1980s.
CHANG: Wow.
KENNEDY: It was always treated as just something that happened. And if you put yourself in the way, if you were in the parking lot or anywhere, honestly, it would be considered your fault. You got what you deserved, sort of. So I think, you know, for me, learning that the rape kit existed as a young woman and that there were these laws and exactly what the laws were, it was so amazing because, at least in theory, the government and the norms of society were that this was wrong.
Marty Goddard and the other anti-rape activists of the time created a new set of norms. They created the idea that every survivor had the right to file evidence and to be treated with respect and to have that evidence taken seriously and tested. And even though we've always fallen short on that goal, the fact that it is a norm is really important. So many people are aware that the kit exists, but they don't know what it looks like. They don't know how it works. There's a kind of invisibility to it. And I feel like part of my mission is to make it visible because I think, if it remains invisible, people don't understand what it is exactly and how it works.
CHANG: And how extraordinary it was that it even came to be.
KENNEDY: Exactly. I think then it makes it easier to take it away.
CHANG: Pagan Kennedy's new book is called "The Secret History Of The Rape Kit: A True Crime Story." Thank you so much, Pagan, for teaching us about Marty Goddard and what she did for this world. And thank you so much for your reporting.
KENNEDY: Thank you.
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